Cycles

 

Cycles

I’m not sure it could be called a silver lining, but the Korean war created a wool boom in this country, it was a time when farmers moved away from actual horsepower to mechanical horse power, which for petrol-heads might seem romantic, but an old mate of mine walked a six-horse team of Clydesdales on a two-day trek for them to be used as dog tucker. To fed the dogs that mustered the sheep. It was a time when kids collected pulled wool that had been caught on the fences. Nowadays though. crossbred wool doesn’t pay for the shearing!

 Another cycle has eventuated; pine trees are being planted on productive farmland ‘to save the planet’ or rather, to cash in on carbon credits. As a forester and forest tree nurseryman, you might think I’d be delighted to see more forested areas, and I am… but not on good farmland! On an accountant’s balance sheet, the margin of growing carbon credits stands up well against present-day sheep farming, but even Greenies don’t like the idea because they have a long-standing dislike for pine trees… but on the other hand, they are happy to see farmers booted off the land because of the ‘climate crisis’.

 Pines are an exotic (introduced) species here, and the Greenies prefer our indigenous species, which is fair enough, I too encouraged the planting of indigenous species. However, indigenous species are far more difficult to husband in their establishment phase because of frost or scorching sun, weed growth and browsing animals. The use of pines is a good move, if there’s a desire to establish widespread areas indigenous species. The pines are easy to establish and quickly qualify for carbon credits, by about age twenty, the duff layer they create will host seedlings of indigenous species that are shade tolerant, and by age fifty, the pines begin to die, leaving gaps for a growth spurt by indigenous seedlings, and eventually you have your indigenous forest. Except… birds don’t know the difference between exotic and indigenous plants, so they carry seeds of both and unless there is a good seed source, the desirable trees that have a thousand-year lifespan can’t be introduced unless by man. One of the ‘ifs’ is that pine forests burn rather easily but indigenous forest is less so inclined.  However, should the forest burn at age twenty or thirty, then it is back to square one. The other ‘if’ is, should the carbon price fall, converting the forest back into farmland is extremely expensive.

 The main reason for the fall in wool prices is because there are cheaper, oil-based alternatives to warm, woollen clothing, blankets and floor covering. Cycles… there will come a time when a forced halt to oil-based materials will be imposed, so then what will be the alternative? Sure, it is possible to manufacture cloth from wood fibre, but then there is the cost of logging and processing. But what if the climate cools as against warming? We’ve been told over and over again that atmospheric carbon dioxide will warm the planet, which in turn will cause extreme weather events. The idea doesn’t stand up to scrutiny and to best show why, compare how increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide is climbing steadily, but the mean average temperature is erratic to say the least. Our climate is so complex it is plain silly to suppose carbon dioxide is the driver… but the propaganda saying so has been effective, therefore the populous allows politicians to have their way.

 The oceans are one of the drivers of the climate the cycles we experience, the Atlantic and Pacific multi-decadal oscillations control the ocean temperature… they have been warm but are gradually moving into a cooling phase. The el nino and la nina phases are generated in the oceans and they too effect our weather patterns. They used to be known as trade winds in the days of sailing ships. And while the IPCC and ‘climate scientists’ discount the sun as a driver of climate… it just has to be. Professor Valentina Zharkova has made a study of the sun’s radiation, her research indicates that the sun isn’t exactly what the planets orbit around, but because of gravity, the larger planets have an influence which pulls slightly on the sun. She has graphed the gravitational influence, which she says is a major driver of warmer and cooler periods which are cyclical (with the orbits). Professor Zharkova predicts a cooling phase, which has already started. Of course, Professor Zharkova’s work has been discredited by certain scientist who rely on the carbon dioxide narrative for their bread and butter, but there appears to be logic in her assertion. When I think about her theory, I look at how the moon influences tides, which means the Earth’s centre of gravity shifts ever so slightly as the moon circles the Earth.

The carbon dioxide narrative and its associated gravy train is so entrenched nowadays, making it difficult for ‘the experts’ to even consider they might be wrong, but in the last IPCC report, at the bottom of table 12, chapter 12, they say, IPCC have concluded that a signal of climate change has not yet emerged beyond natural variability for the following phenomenon: River floods, heavy precipitation and pluvial floods, landslides, drought (all types), severe wind storms, tropical cyclones, sand and dust storms, heavy snowfall and ice storms, hail, snow avalanche, and coastal flooding.

 So, despite Antonio Guterres, alarmist (gravy-train) scientist, most politicians and all the others saying we have a climate emergency, according to the IPCC, we have not.